Instagram

An introduce to Instagram

Instagram is a social networking app which main for photos and video sharing platform. It allow users take a picture directly or import from photo album gallery on smartphone. Instagram similar to Facebook or Twitter, once you sign up, you will have your own profile and a news feed. Users can connect their existing Facebook account as “log in with Facebook” to sign up in Instagram. Thus, all they need is just a username with a password. This is quite convenient to connect other social media platform.

People update their Instagram profile by posting photos. Before posting, Instagram provide brunch of filters to let users enhance and edit their photo. Other than sharing photos, users can also filming video through Instagram or uploaded from mobile. Instagram videos up to one full minute in length. It used to be everybody’s favourite mobile photo sharing app. For me, I actually found out that Instagram can considered as habit-forming. After I posted a photo, I find myself always check notification of Instagram every couple minutes, it force me to reloading who has liked my latest post.

Using Instagram as a Social Network

As you can see, Instagram is a powerful social network that is only getting stronger. There is something called “Followers” and “Following” on Instagram user profile which represents how many people follow by them and how many other users are following them. In order to have a communication or interaction with someone, user is able to like others’ pictures, comment on pictures or follow them.

In 2016, Instagram launches “Instagram stories” that works exactly like Snapchat Stories, it allow users to record video and photos and share it on stories. Those videos and photos are only temporarily which last 24-hour. So, it means whatever user had posted on stories will disappear after one day. It also allows users to decorate their photos with drawings, text, emoji and colour filters.

Systrom explains that “It basically solves a problem for all these people who want to take a ton of photos of an event or something in their lives, but want to manage what their profile looks like and not bomb feed, obviously, as that’s one of the no-nos on Instagram.”

no-nos = Somethingunacceptable or impermissible

Therefore, with Instagram Stories, users of Instagram getting more active than before. They spend more time on it just to record what they’re doing and share it to their followers. As a result, this enable users to reply to someone’s stories. By this way, both of them can be keep in touch since nowadays there is a couple of people using social media to stay in touch or reconnected with somebody else.

Furthermore, Instagram stories also provide “Boomerangs”. This is much convenient for Instagram users since they no need to go somewhere else to make Boomerangs. It is available in Instagram Stories now. It sounds like to “kill two birds with one stone”.

Besides, users can also mention someone they’d like to want to share with in their stories by typing “@”, followed by a username. Someone who’re mentioned in someone’s else story will receive a notification in Direct.

Instagram introduces “Stories” have been used to represent a world where every social apps merged into one. In these recent years, the number of Instagram active users increase continuously. It has become one of the most popular social networks worldwide. Except sharing daily life photos such as selfies, food, landscapes, what do other people share about on Instagram? In the next post, I will share about my research on some brands that use Instagram to carry out their business.